Saturday, January 12, 2013

Snowman week and a giveaway

It's winter time even though it feels like 70 degrees outside today. I am hoping for cold and snow soon. We have 13 days built into our schedule and last year only used one. So I would really like to use a few this year. But even though we haven't had any snow or really cold weather, I plan on talking about snowmen with my students in a week or so. I had planned on doing it next week but I wanted to do some MLK day activities. Anyway, I got a great packet from Valerie Young at All Students Can Shine . I plan on using this with my students and reading a lot of fun books about snowmen. These are some of my favorite snowmen books.

We'll be reading these books during the week and doing a variety of activities with them. Quite a few activities we'll be doing will come from Valerie's unit. (You can check the unit out on TPT by clicking here)

Valerie has included several different writing activities in the unit and word cards to go with winter and snowmen. I've printed out the word cards and I plan on introducing those to my students next week when we read The Snowy Day as part of our work on narrative writing. She has provided with 2 different choices for cards.

I personally like the smaller cards better because they are light on the ink and paper. Plus my wall space is limited. There are a variety of word cards that are associated with winter and snowmen.
There is a labeling sheet, word scramble and a couple of sheets to write with. I plan on using these during our word work and writing time. I give my students a menu for 2 weeks and they can choose the activities they want to work on. I like this because Valerie gives several choices for what the students can do. She also gives choices that use less color ink and less copies. I'm all about those two things.

The last thing in the pack I want to highlight is the super cute craftivity. I am pretty picky about the way I do this in my classroom. Valerie has 2 choices. You can copy the different pieces on construction paper or you can use tracers. I used the tracers because I like my kids to be a little more involved in the process.

I used scrapbook paper instead of construction paper for my example and think it turned out pretty cute. So I'll probably let my students do the same. I'm linking up with Jessica Stanford for the product swap. You can check everyone else's products out over there.

Valerie and I are having a giveaway for both our units. You can enter here or over at her blog to win this Hide and Seek Snowman unit or my Puppy love math activities. .
a Rafflecopter giveaway